


Lead Us Not Into Temptation

by alethiometry



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Light Angst, Season/Series 05, Slow Burn, commitment issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 07:38:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15068336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alethiometry/pseuds/alethiometry
Summary: In a way, the left-hand path has been calling to Monica her whole life. She's long since grown accustomed to ignoring it—except for the fact that Gilfoyle's still a thorn at her side. He's fucking with her, day in and day out. And maybe, she thinks, just maybe, she'll fuck with him right back.After all, what's the worst that could happen?





	Lead Us Not Into Temptation

**Author's Note:**

> Begins sometime between Monica joining the team and the launching of their coin, spans nearly the entirety of 5.08 including the two-month time skip, and ends before they move into the new offices shown in the last scene of season 5.

**I.**

“So,” Gilfoyle says, all slow and drawn-out the way Monica has come to understand is the tone he uses when he's about to say something he thinks is particularly humorous, “you're kind of a black hat now.”

Monica stops typing mid-sentence. “How do you figure?”

“You're one of us,” Gilfoyle replies, settling back in his chair and stretching languidly. “You're finally a part of the team in an official capacity. So it's only a matter of time before you make your own journey down the left-hand path.”

Monica rolls her eyes and resumes typing. She doesn't have time to deal with Gilfoyle’s pseudo-Satanic, philosophical bullshit on a good day—and this definitely hasn't been one of those. It's a quarter to eight in the evening and she's only halfway done with her deck; the rest of the team clocked out hours ago, but as newly-minted CFO she's got weeks’ worth of work to catch up on if they want to have any hope of PiedPiperCoin being worth half a damn. She silently curses Gilfoyle for floating the idea to Richard in the first place.

And if Monica were the paranoid type, she'd suspect that Gilfoyle is putting in a little extra effort to make her life a living hell. They're the only two people left in the office, and while she's drowning in work he seems to have stayed late solely to torment her. He says he's got projects to work on, but when she walked past his desk on the way to grab a quick snack from the kitchen earlier, he was browsing reddit on one of his monitors and photoshopping Jared and Dinesh’s heads onto the bodies of Princess Leia and Jabba the Hutt on another. (She doesn’t even bother asking at this point; she’s not sure she's ever worked with a group of senior management more talented or more childish—and in the tech industry, that's really saying something.)

So yeah. Monica’s not paranoid. Gilfoyle is definitely fucking with her. Maybe this is retaliation for having him do that Emily Chang interview last week; she knew he'd hated every second of it. That’s why she’d arranged it, after all.

“A few months ago I hacked thirty thousand smart fridges and used them as makeshift servers,” Gilfoyle continues—and it’s really quite presumptuous of him to assume that Monica gives even half a shit about what he’s saying. “Richard put malware onto a hundred and sixty thousand Hooliphones, overheated the hardware, and caused fifty of them to violently explode. Dinesh incurred billions of dollars’ worth of COPPA fines before slipping PiperChat over to Gavin Belson and wiping his hands clean. Even Jared bought fake users from a Bangladeshi click farm, effectively committing investor fraud in order to keep the platform afloat. I’m sure you must know at least some of this already.

“Point is, we've all done our part to stay in the game, Monica. What makes you think you won't do the same, when your time comes?”

And loathe as she is to admit it, that's the question that eats at Monica for the rest of the week.

She's never fancied herself as someone who’s stayed rigidly on the straight-and-narrow; much as she's one to play _mostly_ by the rules (okay, maybe 60/40 rule-following versus bending), she's risked her job to help out the guys on multiple occasions. Richard’s the only one who knows exactly how often she's stuck her neck out for them, but the rest of the team isn’t stupid, either. Jared may play the plausible deniability card, and Dinesh and Gilfoyle may pretend not to understand or care about the business side of things, but she knows they all know more than they let on. She’s been in their corner since day one.

So, really, fuck Gilfoyle for thinking she thinks she’s above it all.

“Gilfoyle is full of shit,” Dinesh tells her flippantly when Monica finds herself venting to him one morning while he puts on a fresh pot of coffee for the office. “We've all done black-hat shit, but you could argue that this entire new internet is tailor-made for black hats, so it’s kind of like we’ve all defaulted to that status now. And by defaulting to that status, we’ve effectively made that label meaningless. We may have more flexible moral compasses these days, but the important thing is that we have them at all. Gilfoyle's just fucking with you because you're the newest addition to the team.”

“I was on the team before there even _was_ a team. Richard would have fucked off with ten million of Gavin Belson’s dollars if I hadn’t convinced him to choose Peter Gregory instead.” Monica can’t help it; snagging Pied Piper for Raviga was and still remains a point of great pride for her. It’s not every day that you successfully talk somebody out of accepting an easy fortune.

“Nine million,” Dinesh corrects. “Erlich had his ten percent, remember? Anyway, you know what I mean. You’re technically working _for_ Richard now instead of _with_ him, and that’s enough of a distinction for Gilfoyle to be a dick about. So, welcome aboard, I guess. We’re all black hats here.”

“So the COPPA stuff doesn't bother you anymore?” Monica presses. “Or the exploding Hooliphones? Or that you almost got Gilfoyle thrown in jail for the Seppen hack?”

“Well, see, that last one is different. The previous two were byproducts of working in tech—at the end of the day, you’ve got a job to do, so you just can’t let that stuff get to you, you know? The Seppen stuff, though, we've worked it out. He nailed my laptop to a coffee table.”

Monica raises an eyebrow. “That's it? He almost got arrested and deported because you spilled the beans while you were drunk, and all he did was break your laptop?”

“The thing about Gilfoyle,” Dinesh says, lowering his voice and leaning in conspiratorially, “is that he's a giant fucking douchebag troll of a human being, but if he respects you then he has your back no matter what. Like, this one time, back when Jack Barker was making us work on the box, he actually quit Pied Piper, so EndFrame tried to hire him to help build out their platform. I mean, think about it. He left us because he wanted to work with middle-out in a way that we weren’t allowed to at the time, and then the only other company in the world with that kind of technology offers him a job? He could have easily joined up and had a grand old time fucking us over. But they stole our IP, so he told them to go fuck themselves and came back to warn us.

“Okay, it’s like this: deep down in his twisted, Satanic little soul, I think he genuinely cares about all this—about all of us. Like, a lot. So he’s gotta overcorrect for that by being as big of a dick as possible to anybody he actually likes. Which now includes you.”

“Well, at least that’s good for you, right?” Monica points out. “Maybe he’ll leave you alone now that he’s got me to pester all fucking day.”

Dinesh snorts. “Not a fucking chance,” he says. “But it is nice to know that I’m not the only one who has to deal with his bullshit anymore. Oh, and don't tell him I said all this. It'd shatter his fragile ego and maybe break his brain a little bit, and as much as I hate to admit it, we kind of need his brain working at full capacity right now.”

Monica's never thought about it that way before, but Dinesh is right. Gilfoyle is the most carefully composed person she's ever met, the irony being that all that care is taken into presenting the world with an impression of a man who cares about absolutely nothing.

There's gotta be _something_ , though, she thinks. There always is.

\---

When Monica was a kid, she’d believed in fairy tales. Grandpa watched her and David after school while their mother worked overtime to make enough money to cover as much of their tuition as possible, and he always called her his little princess, so that’s what she wanted to be. It wasn’t a burden to meet and exceed expectations in everything she did; it was a privilege. Straight A’s, varsity athlete, class president, Ivy League summa-cum-laude, and a big, fat, fancy M.B.A... those were things she knew she _should_ want, and so she kept her head down and convinced herself that that was synonymous with _did want_.

So when everybody told her she and Teddy were the perfect couple, the power couple, the prince and princess of their own 21st-century fairy tale, she believed that, too. After all, they’d been in love since the ninth grade, hadn’t they? They did everything together: high school, undergrad, moving out to California for business school. They were meant to be.

What were her doubts, so small and insignificant compared to the opinions of everybody else she’s ever known? Numbers don’t lie, and in this case, everyone’s optimism overwhelmingly outnumbered her doubts. She could trust them.

She shouldn’t have.

It’s not Grandpa’s fault that she spent so long chasing the dream of happily-ever-after; he’d just been doing his best, and he was so, so happy when she asked him to walk her down the aisle. That, at least, had been good; it had to be the happiest day of _some_ one’s life.

But life doesn’t end when you ride off into the sunset with the person you’re told is your One True Love. It continues, and stagnates, and Grandpa suffers a sudden stroke and dies while you’re still on the fucking plane home.

And then the princess is clawing at the walls, desperate for an out. She was the Little Mermaid, dreaming of life on solid ground, Cinderella yearning for the ball, Rapunzel in her tower, Mulan absconding in her father’s armor.

Teddy wanted kids. Monica wanted… something else.

It wasn’t Teddy’s fault, but it wasn't hers, either. Monica tells herself that every day. Sometimes, things just don’t work out. Sometimes, you don’t know what the fuck it is you want, and it’s not fair for other people to be weighed down by your own flightiness. You just have to cut yourself loose, and better to do it sooner rather than later.

Leaving him hurt more than she thought it would, but she knows it hurt him a great deal more. But maybe that hurt was the price of her freedom. She tried not to think about it too much in those initial, lonely days, when it was just beginning to sink in that she was truly on her own for the first time in her entire life. She focused on her job instead, on learning as much as she could from Peter Gregory, who was observant enough to notice all the extra hours she put in at Raviga, and gracious enough to take her under his wing. She poured whatever was left of her into Peter’s work— _her_ work—and gradually the hurt began to fade. Freedom tasted too sweet to ever go back to anything even vaguely resembling what she’d had before, even if that freedom meant pulling seventy-hour work weeks to delay as much as possible returning home to the suffocation of a barren apartment.

And then two upstart young Hooli employees crashed Peter’s TED Talk, and everything changed.

\---

It’s not weird that Monica has been thinking about Gilfoyle. She’s just doing her due diligence as CFO; they’re working closely together, so she has to know who she’s dealing with. She’s supposed to be a people person, after all. Even if _people_ in this situation entails something more akin to her childhood neighbor’s asshole cat that mewled and scratched at her windowsill in the middle of the night, and hissed at her until she banged on the glass or threw wadded-up balls of scrap paper to shoo it away. And still it came back, night after night after night. Sometimes it brought her its kill. Birds, mice, chipmunks—she buried them all in the backyard, beneath her mother’s bed of hydrangeas, because she’d learned in school that decomposing corpses release nutrients back into the soil, helping to restart the cycle of death and rebirth.

If it helped the hydrangeas with their growth at all, she never saw any significant difference. They grew nicely either way, but she likes to think it helped. It certainly didn’t kill them, and that was something.

In any case, for all his snide and smartass remarks, Gilfoyle hasn’t started flinging dead animals her way, so Monica supposes she has to give him credit for that. And he doesn’t bring up the black hat stuff again, although part of her wonders if it’s because he knows she’s already thinking about it day in and day out—and fuck, now he’s in her head.

She could never bring herself to truly hate that fucking cat.

“I don’t know, Monica, he doesn’t sound _that_ bad,” Kirsten tells her when they meet for dinner and drinks. It’s been a long, long time since Monica’s gone and done anything purely for fun after work—a fact that becomes all the more apparent when she’s only two beers deep and finds herself ranting ceaselessly about Gilfoyle to the best friend she’s been inadvertently flaking on for—weeks? No, months. God. Monica makes a mental note to feign going to the restroom in a bit, so that she can at least surreptitiously pick up the check. It doesn't even begin to make up for what a shitty friend she's been, but it's a start.

“You just need to hear him speak,” Monica says, viciously spearing a roasted brussels sprout with her fork. “He’s got this whole philosophical spiel… he sounds like—like he wants to dig up Nietzsche’s body and fellate his remains. God, now I fucking sound like him, too.”

“Honey, he sounds like every other office weirdo in the valley,” Kirsten points out. “Every company has at least one, and they’re all lining up to blow Nietzsche. And the irony is, they probably all hate each other, see each other as tryhards and posers. They’re all the same, though. And pretty much harmless. You just have to nod and smile, scroll past the nihilistic diatribes they post on Facebook, and resist the temptation to engage.”

What Kirsten doesn’t understand, though, is how fun it is to engage, to worm her way under Gilfoyle’s skin. Or maybe she’s right, and Monica’s an idiot fighting a battle she’s doomed to lose. It’s just so hard to resist, when he’s right fucking there in front of her, forty-plus hours a week. And fucking with him feels so, so good.

“So let’s say you’re right.” Monica finds Gilfoyle smoking on one of the picnic tables on the office’s rooftop patio one afternoon. She pulls out a cigarette from her own pack, then uses his Zippo to light it.

Gilfoyle doesn’t even glance in her direction, just continues scrolling through his phone.“I’m always right,” he replies, as monotonously disinterested as ever. “What, specifically, am I right about this time?”

“Let’s say I do end up, what did you say, ‘ _doing my part to stay in the game’_?” Monica says, climbing onto table to sit next to him. “What makes you think I haven’t done it before?”

“I never said you haven’t. I know you’ve gone rogue before.” Gilfoyle gives her a piercing look that’s eerily reminiscent of Laurie Bream. “You’ve breached confidentiality clauses and NDAs to give Richard advice that’s saved our asses on multiple and disparate occasions. You quit the VC firm that _you co-founded_ to come work with us. That’s all commendable, but it's not the same thing.”

“Well, I’m sorry I haven’t vandalized any household appliances yet. Tell you what, you’ll be the first person I tell if it happens.”

Gilfoyle snorts derisively. He flicks some ash from the tip of his cigarette, then takes a long draw. “Don’t think you’re above us just because you’ve kept your hands clean longer than we have,” he says. Smoke curls up around his lips, fading away in the afternoon sunlight.

Monica rolls her eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re very presumptuous?”

“Am I wrong?”

“You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”

Gilfoyle starts on a new cigarette. “So enlighten me.”

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Monica snaps. “I don’t see why you’d care, anyway.”

“I don’t,” Gilfoyle replies. “But Richard hired you specifically to work on our coin offering. Ours. Yours and mine. I like to know who I’m working with.”

“I could say the same thing about you,” Monica says, “but I think I know you well enough already.”

And that, finally, makes Gilfoyle put away his phone and look up. “Oh, really?” he says with a smirk. “And what, exactly, do you know?”

“Well,” Monica says, then pauses to see if he reacts, if he shifts uncomfortably or looks away—any small, subconscious action that might give away what’s on his mind.

Nothing. He’s good.

She’s better.

“For starters, you’re a talented full-stack programmer with a penchant for working with hardware,” she says. “There’s no reason to deny it; you’re outstanding at what you do, and Richard’s lucky he’s got you on his team. But you’re also arrogant, and presumptuous, and you’re so fucking guarded. You don’t let people in. You’ve built up this—this _persona_ , that you’re somehow above it all. Not just that you’re better than everyone, but also that you just—can’t be bothered to give a shit. About anything. It’s very important to you, keeping up that impression. And that’s all I really need to know about you.”

Gilfoyle raises an eyebrow. “Been talking to Dinesh, have you?”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s got this theory that I care more than I let on. That all it takes is some small threat to come our way and suddenly a switch in me flips and I come swooping in like a fucking deus-ex-machina to save the day. Because I _secretly care_.”

“And that’s not the case?”

“Absolutely not. I may work for Richard, but I serve only myself. It just so happens that my interests have conveniently aligned with the team’s for—quite some time now.”

Monica laughs and crushes the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray between them. “Sure they have, buddy,” she says, patting him on the shoulder and climbing off the picnic table. “Sure they have.”

She counts a full fifteen additional minutes before Gilfoyle comes back downstairs. He doesn’t speak to her for the rest of the day, and then for two days after that, except when strictly necessary vis-a-vis their coin project. It’s the most productive two and a half days of work she’s had since she joined.

Interestingly enough, it’s also the most boring.

  


**II.**

Perhaps as retribution for replacing the screensaver on his computer with a meticulously doctored image of Princess Leia and Jabba the Hutt, featuring none other than Jared and Dinesh, respectively, Richard assigns Gilfoyle to accompany Monica in scoping out some cryptocurrency summit in Los Angeles. Or perhaps it’s just another manifestation of Richard’s growing desperation. The Pipernet’s been deployed for a month now, their growth is stagnant, and their coin valuation hasn’t changed, so there's nothing substantial for them to present there. But he wants them to do things like _attend seminars_ and _network_ , and other dumb business shit that makes Gilfoyle’s skin crawl at the mere suggestion. They’re all adrift in the doldrums of their staggeringly disappointing launch; Richard’s just sending out birds every which way in the hopes that one of them will return with signs of land.

Gilfoyle can’t tell who’s unhappier with the situation, himself or Monica.

“I hate L.A.,” Monica mutters as they leave Richard’s office and return to their desks. “Not crazy about spending an entire fucking weekend with you, either.”

“Believe me, the feeling’s mutual,” Gilfoyle replies. “At least if Dinesh were coming instead of you, we could ditch the conference and spend the entire weekend playing Counter Strike and raiding the mini bar on the company dime.”

Monica snorts. “If Dinesh were going instead of me, you’d murder each other before you even reached the airport.”

“I’m right fucking here, assholes,” Dinesh says without looking up from his computer. Gilfoyle flips him the bird.

They fly into L.A. bright and early Friday morning and arrive downtown just in time for the summit to officially begin. At least if they’d driven, they could have wasted half a day just getting down here—which is precisely the reason they flew. Jared is too meticulous about scheduling these things for his own fucking good, Gilfoyle thinks. He pulls out his phone to text Dinesh as they settle in for the opening remarks, only to have Monica smack his hand like an honest-to-Satan motherfucking grade school teacher.

“Pay attention,” she hisses.

“Why?” he says through gritted teeth. She just sighs and rolls her eyes in response. He puts away his phone, and does his best not to retain any information from the various speakers.

He does manage to ditch her for most of the day in favor of attending a few of the seminars and talks that genuinely interest him. He speaks with a couple other systems and security guys, and it's not terrible—though not especially riveting, either. He gives them the business cards that Jared had printed for him and slips theirs into his bag where they’ll remain, crumpled and forgotten, and considers his work for the weekend done.

“It's like talking to two hundred clones of you,” Monica says when they meet back at the hotel bar that evening. “As if one wasn't already bad enough.”

“Trust me, these assholes are all super fucking normal compared to most crypto guys,” Gilfoyle tells her. “You should see the goddamn mole rats on the crypto forums. At least the guys here have the decency to wash their clothes and take fucking showers and see sunlight more than once a month.”

“Lucky me,” Monica says drily, draining her glass of wine. “I think two of them tried to ask me out.”

“I’m surprised there weren’t more,” Gilfoyle replies before he realizes what he’s just said. “Uh, I’m not saying that you’re—well, objectively—you’re not my type,” he mutters.

Monica smirks. “You’re not mine, either.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

Saturday unfolds in much the same way Friday had: with seminars and meetups, networking events and small group activities. By the time they break for lunch, Gilfoyle is heavily considering turning tail and heading straight back to Palo Alto on his own. Whatever initial vague interest he had yesterday in any of this has completely faded; he doesn’t know how these assholes could make something as technologically fascinating as cryptocurrency so damn boring. Even the bottom-feeders on the dark web forums he frequents have more engaging conversations than the circlejerk this summit has become. When he finds himself dozing off during the first seminar after the lunch break, he decides that it’s high time to retreat to his hotel room to take a nap.

On his way to the elevators he spots Monica sitting at the same bar where they’d met last night, talking with some guy that Gilfoyle’s seen around the convention a couple times, but never spoken directly with. He’d only stuck out because, among the rest of the code monkeys sent to mix and mingle at this conference (Gilfoyle very much included) he and Monica are two of a very small number of attendees who are clearly finance people; they’ve got the wardrobe and social graces to prove it.

Well, good for Monica.

Or maybe not. She’s smiling politely, but in a brittle sort of way, as if she’d like nothing better than to crawl out of her skin. Gilfoyle stops in his tracks, wondering if he ought to intervene. Yeah, he decides, he probably should. But then the guy gets up and walks away, and Monica returns to the bar and orders a glass of something strong and dark.

Weird.

It’s barely two in the afternoon, so if Gilfoyle were home right now he’d already be three beers deep and halfway through his fourth. Monica, though? That’s... unexpected.

On the other hand, she’s a grown-ass woman and can take care of her own damn self. And no one seems to be bothering her anymore. Gilfoyle heads up to his room.

Forty-five minutes into a very comfortable nap, his phone rings. It’s Monica.

“What do you want?” he says in lieu of a hello.

“Can you cover for me?” she asks, only slightly slurring her words. “I’m not, uh, feeling too well, and—were you sleeping just now? Hey, did you fucking ditch the conference?”

“No,” Gilfoyle lies. “Where are you?”

Monica’s room is two stories up from Gilfoyle’s, and when she opens the door for him she’s already changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants, her long hair twisted up into a haphazard bun. Part of him wishes he hadn’t come up to check on her at all; it feels invasive and wrong, seeing her this disheveled. She’s _Monica_ , for fuck’s sake.

“Go away.” Monica leans on the doorframe for support, speaking to the wall behind him. Her breath reeks of booze. “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit,” Gilfoyle says. “I saw you slamming back drinks at the bar earlier. What the hell’s going on with you?”

“Why do you care? Wait, are you fucking stalking me?”

“We’re on the same team, Monica. Jared’ll slit my fucking throat if I let you die of alcohol poisoning while we’re here, and I very much enjoy being alive.”

“I’m not—I only had a couple drinks. Just—go downstairs and watch a presentation or something.”

“You know I won’t.”

“Then go—go—I don’t know, prank call Dinesh, or—or go see a movie, or jerk off in your own room. I don’t fucking want to talk to you right now, okay?”

Gilfoyle holds her gaze for a moment. Her eyes, free of makeup, have dark circles under them. “Fine,” he says, though something tells him it’s anything but. “Remember to drink some damn water.”

Monica shuts the door in his face.

He considers going downstairs and finding the guy she was talking to, the guy who’d rattled her so badly. Then he considers that she’ll probably murder him in his sleep if she catches wind of him sticking his nose into something she clearly wants him to leave alone. She knows which room is his, after all, and he does value his life… but.

It’s worth a shot.

It’s not that he cares particularly strongly for Monica. They work very well together, he’ll concede, but in any context outside of work, he mostly finds her downright aggravating. He thought he had her pegged, in the years that they’ve been colleagues; but as soon as she joined the team—really, actually joined, with employee payroll and everything—it’s like everything he’s ever understood to be true has just… turned itself on its head, leaving him unmoored and grasping at things he can't even be sure are there anymore. If they were ever there at all, that is.

He likes to tinker, likes to figure out how stuff works. Break things down to their core components. Machines are easier to break down than people, but people aren’t that hard to break down, either. Usually.

Take Dinesh, for instance. Dinesh wears his heart on his goddamn sleeve, and everything he says or does only serves to reinforce what Gilfoyle already knows of him. It’s why, despite the tempestuousness of their relationship, they can work together when needed; they make perfect sense to each other. Monica, on the other hand? Each time he thinks he knows a little more, she finds another way to show him just how wrong he apparently is. It’s inconsiderate.

And now she’s off her game in a way he’s never seen before, and doesn’t ever want to see again. Not because of any bullshit protective instinct that Dinesh somehow still believes is lying latent in his psyche, just because—she’s _Monica_. As CFO, she’s technically his superior, and as a longtime colleague who for years held a seat on the company board and served as business advisor and moral compass to them all, she’s won his respect countless times over. So whatever’s happening with her now, it’s untenable. If someone’s fucking with her, that puts Gilfoyle at a disadvantage, too. Professionally speaking. And he just wants to do his damn job.

Gilfoyle scours the convention floor for two hours, making idle chatter with the other guys who actually have products to present, whose coin valuations aren’t sitting stagnant at seven fucking cents. He keeps an eye out for a tall, clean-shaven man with strawberry blonde hair wearing one of those douchey expensive blazers that Dinesh had taken to sporting during his delightfully brief, disastrous tenure as CEO. But the douchebag is nowhere to be found, and it’s not until Monica texts him asking if he wants to order room service together that Gilfoyle realizes that he has indeed spent the afternoon inadvertently covering for her, just like he’d said he wouldn’t.

Son of a bitch.

 _Just order me a burger, no onions,_ he texts back. _I’ll be up in a bit._ He makes one last round of the main hall, the hotel lobby, and the bar before heading upstairs.

“Walk a straight line and recite the alphabet backwards,” Gilfoyle says when Monica opens her door for him again, looking in far better shape. She flips him the bird, but lets him inside this time. His burger is sitting on the tray on her bed. She’s already halfway through her bowl of pasta.

“Have you been eating my fries?” he asks.

“Early bird catches the worm,” Monica replies breezily, swiping another one from his plate.

Gilfoyle rolls his eyes and takes his food to the armchair by the window. Monica ignores him and continues eating at the desk, staring at the opposite wall.

“So,” Gilfoyle says after a couple minutes. “This is fun.”

“Fuck off, Gilfoyle.” Monica’s mouth is full of pasta.

“I can go, you know. I just came for my burger. This was your idea.”

“Yeah. I know.” Monica puts her fork down with a sigh. She still doesn't look at him. “I just—I could use the company right now.”

“Okay.”

“I ran into my ex today. Earlier. At the conference.”

“Your ex,” Gilfoyle repeats. It does kind of figure, but he doesn’t tell her that.

“Husband.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. If I’d known he’d be here—I haven’t spoken to him in years. Turns out, he married the goalie on my high school field hockey team, like, six months after our annulment. Bridget Hamilton. Fucking bitch. She’s always had it out for me. They’re expecting their second child in October. He’s happy. He’s so fucking happy.”

“And that’s… a bad thing?” Gilfoyle guesses. Monica just gives him that withering look that makes him think he should already know the answer. As if she ever fucking tells him what’s on her mind, or gives him anything to work with.

 _Who’s presumptuous now?_ he thinks, but bites his tongue.

“Look, I know you don’t like me,” Monica says. “And I can’t say I really like you very much, either. But God help me, I don’t fucking want to be alone tonight. Uh. I mean. Not like that. I just—”

“Yeah,” Gilfoyle says quietly. “I get it.”

“Just fucking talk to me, Gilfoyle, okay? I don’t care about what. Tell me about your hard-on for crypto, or—I don’t know, try and convert me to Satanism or something. Anything.”

Gilfoyle thinks for a moment, then grins. “Did Dinesh ever tell you about the best prank we ever pulled on Erlich?” he asks. “We thought for sure he would evict us. This was way before Pied Piper, before Richard and Bighead moved in, even.”

Monica shakes her head.

Gilfoyle tells her.

\---

“Hey, listen,” Monica says when Gilfoyle drops her off at her apartment Sunday evening. “Thanks for, um—”

“Don't mention it. I'll see you at work tomorrow.”

And with that, Gilfoyle hightails it back to the house, eager to finally sleep in his own bed.

It’s the last night that he gets his full six hours for the next month or so; the crypto summit, all told, was a complete waste of time. Three weeks after they return, nothing has changed and Gilfoyle has to bite back the urge to tell Richard _I told you so_. It’s a rare moment of mercy on his part, but Richard looks like such shit lately that he just can’t bring himself to do it; it’d be like kicking a dying animal. The guy has dragged Jared’s old cot into the office and is fucking sleeping there, for fuck’s sake. Even prissy Dinesh, who Gilfoyle knows for a fact spends at least forty-five minutes primping and preening in the bathroom every damn morning, has thrown in the towel. Gilfoyle didn't even know he could grow a beard. And that’s just fucking bleak.

For his part, he finds himself picking up smoking again in earnest, going from a few cigarettes a week to upwards of half a pack a day. Sometimes Monica joins him on his breaks, and sometimes they simply pass each other on the way to or from the roof. She’s smoking more frequently, too; it’s unclear which of them is the bad influence on the other. Maybe they’re both bad influences on each other, like some kind of mutually assured destruction scenario brought on by both their shared project and their perhaps foolhardy belief in Richard’s vision.

They don’t talk about that evening at the crypto summit. Not that Gilfoyle’s isn’t curious about all the things that he never knew about Monica, but he knows a desire for privacy when he sees it—can relate to it on a very personal level—so he keeps his mouth shut. He can tell she’s grateful for that, and that’s good, too. Good for their rapport as colleagues. Good for the company.

It wasn't supposed to pan out quite this way, Gilfoyle thinks. He didn't come out to Palo Alto to facilitate somebody else’s dream, no matter how cool the tech. He came here to build something for himself, on his own terms, and get rich, and do whatever the fuck he wanted. Instead, he’s building things for his genius roommate-slash-friend, on said genius roommate-slash-friend’s terms, has a livable but by no means exorbitant salary after years of making next to nothing, and does whatever the fuck is best for the team. Sometimes it’s what he wants to do, anyway. And sometimes it isn’t. He finds himself making less and less of a distinction with each passing day.

So perhaps the theory that Dinesh and Monica share about his motivations does carry some weight. And the only thing that troubles him at the end of the day is how _not_ troubled he is by the idea that they may know him even better than he sometimes knows himself. But there's no reason to try and fix something that's clearly not broken, so he figures he can just carry on as usual. As long as they don't know they're right, they're still, functionally, dead wrong. It's Schrödinger’s Cat all over again, and he has no intention of letting them pry open this particular box.

Four weeks after the crypto summit, they finally see the Pipernet making progress. Monica’s the first to suspect something’s amiss, then stays to watch him pull an all-nighter hacking something together to isolate the anomalous user spike. Gilfoyle’s not sure why she does it; it’s not as if she can help in any technical capacity. Two hours in, he snidely suggests she quit hovering over his shoulder and go do something useful, like enroll in Codeacademy. Barring that, maybe she can go home and get some goddamn sleep. No one’s forcing her to stay.

She chucks her pack of cigarettes at him in response, hitting him squarely in the side of the head. Later, she makes them both coffee.

He appreciates her company.

And yeah, he thinks as he savors his celebratory Pappy van Winkle-spiked coffee when all the dust has settled, after all the shit they’ve been through these past couple of months, he definitely considers her a friend.

\---

They don’t toast to PPC again until their valuation hits five dollars. There's still a long way to go, but progress is progress—and theirs, since the quashing of the 51% attack, has been encouragingly steady.

It's just a normal day at the office otherwise. Which is to say: Richard is stressing, Holden is hovering, Jared is stress-cleaning in the kitchen, and Dinesh is peacocking to the other coders while Becky and Danny volley insults at one another like their own disgusting brand of foreplay. But it's a pleasant sort of chaos, the kind that's familiar and (for the most part) contained. Functional. And around lunchtime, Monica calls Gilfoyle over to her desk and surreptitiously pours a healthy helping from her bottle of high-end rum into his cereal.

“The Real McCoy.” Gilfoyle turns the bottle over to read the label. “Impressive. But what about you?”

In response, Monica winks and takes a large swig from her glass of—

“I’m guessing that’s not just iced tea.” Gilfoyle grins. “In that case, bottoms up.”

They clink their respective vessels together. His cereal is fucking delicious; he wonders why he’s never thought to spike it before.

He walks her home after work—it’s not a big deal; her apartment’s only about a half mile away—then calls a Lyft for himself.

Dinesh has already booted up PUBG when he gets home, and is in the middle of a frenzied battle royale. Gilfoyle grabs a beer from the fridge and settles down in his usual spot to watch him play this round, and maybe backseat game a little bit.

“Are you playing a new fucking map without me?” he demands after a moment.

“Fuck yeah, I am,” Dinesh replies as he headshots another player. “Figured you’d be spending the night at your girlfriend’s, so I thought I’d ditch your flaky ass.”

“Monica’s not my girlfriend.”

“But you and Tara _are_ on a break currently,” Dinesh points out, “and you _did_ walk Monica home just now.”

“If that’s all it takes for you to qualify a relationship as romantic, then even you would be in possession of something that could be broadly categorized as sexual prowess. We’re friends. Which you also have zero experience with, so I suppose it’s only fair let this misconception slide.”

“Whatever. Dickhead. You two have been spending a lot of time together, that’s all.”

“Of course we have, dipshit, we’re working on the same project. A project, by the way, that will net us millions in revenue once it takes off, so maybe show some damn respe—on your right. Your _right_ , Dinesh. Three o’clo—dumbass.” Gilfoyle smirks as the in-game camera cuts away to Dinesh’s avatar crumpling broken and bloody to the ground.

“Fuck you,” Dinesh says, closing out of the game. “Anyway, you clearly like her. It’s so fucking obvious. Why don’t you just admit that you have actual feelings, just like every other human being on the entire planet?”

“Why don’t you choke on my balls?”

“Hundred bucks says you two will hook up within a month.”

“Then you may as well pay me in full right now,” Gilfoyle replies, “because it's not going to happen. Anyway, now that we’re both actually making money, cash bets are bush league. Tell you what: if you’re right about this—which you’re not—I’ll give you back your parking spot. You can charge up your shitty new Hyundai right next to all the other hippie shitmobiles, in perpetuity, for the rest of time. Or until Lucifer himself returns to earth to rain Hellfire down upon us all.”

“Fine. If I’m wrong—which I’m not—I’ll buy you another bottle of that shitty fancy bourbon you like so much.”

“Don’t you dare slander the name of Pappy.” Gilfoyle extends a hand for Dinesh to shake. “Looks like we have ourselves a bet.”

Dinesh rolls his eyes, and shakes his hand.

  


**III.**

The first time Gilfoyle walks Monica home, they’re both tipsy from an afternoon of sneaking drinks in the office, and need fresh air.

The second time he walks her home is a week after that; they’re both working late, her car is in the shop for the rest of the week, and she flat-out refuses to go anywhere near his stupid electric apocalypse bike, even if it could fit more than one person on it.

The third time happens the very next day, under the very same circumstances—except the third time that Gilfoyle walks Monica home, they end up fucking. And it would be so convenient to blame it on another round of secret, celebratory day-drinking, except they’re both acutely aware that they’re both stone cold sober.

Perhaps it’s simply a function of spending far too much time with him in recent months, or perhaps she’s just been bored with how smoothly everything has been going lately—either way, as they reach the entrance of her apartment complex, Monica finds herself placing a hand on Gilfoyle’s arm before he can pull up the Lyft app on his phone, then pushing him up against the wall of the building and kissing him deeply.

Gilfoyle responds in kind after only a moment’s hesitation, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer as he bites gently at her lower lip, and Monica can’t help herself—it’s been such a long time since she’s let go of her inhibitions like this—she moans a little against the heat of his mouth.

“Come upstairs,” she manages to gasp, because she needs him to fuck her, _now_ , and they’re still out here making out like fucking teenagers.

She shoves him onto her bed before climbing on top and straddling his hips, pulling him into another kiss and tugging at the hem of his shirt. He takes the hint and peels it off before snaking his hands up her thighs, fingers rubbing at her clit, and she moans again as she lets him flip her onto her back, hiking up her skirt and slipping off her underwear.

Then he spreads her thighs wide, and goes in with his tongue, and Monica practically screams.

He pulls away before she can come, the fucking tease, and trails kisses up her stomach and between her breasts while she pulls off her skirt and blouse and unhooks her bra. She can taste herself on his lips and tongue when he kisses her again, his thumb toying at her nipple until she’s practically writhing beneath him.

“Mmm,” he murmurs against the base of her jaw, almost purring as she arches her back and works at undoing his jeans. “So impatient.”

She slips a hand into his boxers in response, stroking at his erection and grinning when his hips buck and he lets out a small gasp. “Just fuck me already,” she hisses through gritted teeth.

So he does.

“I thought I wasn’t your type,” Monica teases afterwards as she passes Gilfoyle a tissue to clean himself up.

“Thought I wasn’t yours, either,” Gilfoyle replies.

“Well, shit. Hey, why do you look so grumpy?” she asks, sitting up. “Way to make a girl feel good about herself.”

Gilfoyle blushes a little. It’s a nice color on him. “I, um. This is fucking stupid,” he mutters, dropping his gaze with a wry half-smile. “Dinesh bet me that, uh, that I was into you, and that I’d act on it before the end of the month. Turns out he was right, so now I have to give him back his parking space.”

“Well, technically, _I_ was the one who acted on it, so maybe it doesn’t count,” Monica points out. “Besides, what Dinesh doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?”

Gilfoyle chuckles. “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” he murmurs, and pulls her in for a slow, lazy kiss. He brings a hand up to cup her cheek—and Monica pulls away hastily, heart pounding. There’s a brief flash of what might be hurt in his eyes before it’s replaced with confusion.

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammers, suddenly feeling very small. “I just—I’m not—”

She trails off, unable to find the words to describe the panic that had spiked through her just now. The fucking, she can handle. She can handle that just fine. But this intimacy, the familiarity and affection in his kiss and the way he tried to hold her—this terrifies her in a way she can’t fully explain. Doesn’t want to fully explain. Not here. Not to him.

“This doesn’t have to happen again,” Gilfoyle says quickly. He gets up and begins rooting around for his clothes. His face is impassive. “No hard feelings. If that’s what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Monica admits with a sigh, staring down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Gilfoyle nod. “Okay,” he says, not unkindly. “I’ll, uh. I’ll leave you alone, then.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats as he finishes dressing himself.

Gilfoyle leaves.

Monica won. She knows this. Gilfoyle knows this. She can see it in his eyes when he looks at her: he’s intimidated, impressed, infatuated. He looks at her like he thinks she’s better than he is, like she’s on some sort of pedestal. Because she’s a woman in a male-dominated industry and she’s held her own in conference rooms filled with men twice her age and ten times her net worth. Because despite not having any computer science background whatsoever, she still commands the respect of a room full of coders. Because she knows her liquor and likes the pricey stuff and can keep pace with his drinking, because when he pushes at her she always pushes back with equal or greater force, because he only sees the parts of her that she lets him see. She’s independent, indefatigable, infallible. She stood toe-to-toe with Gilfoyle, looked him straight in the eye, and he blinked first. She should savor this victory.

She should want this. She _had_ wanted this.

She doesn’t want this.

She doesn’t know what she wants.

She feels hollow inside, and it would be an easy thing to fill herself back up, if only she knew what to fill herself with. Teddy was always going to be a lost cause, and he’s happier without her, anyway, now that he’s got everything he’s ever wanted. She should take some satisfaction from that, from knowing that her leaving was what made all that possible for him. But that line of thinking feels borderline psychotic.

And there’s only so much satisfaction she can find in throwing herself into her career. For a long time, it was enough just to keep busy. Not so, anymore—and she’s not sure when that changed.

She’s so far from the perfect princess she used to believe she could be. And the kicker is, it’s her own damn fault for hindering herself every step of the way.

She’s the Little Mermaid, walking silently on pins and needles to become somebody she’s not. She’s Cinderella at the ball, a gilded impostor, daring midnight to come and expose her charade. She’s Rapunzel in her tower, cutting off her own hair so that no one can ever again climb up to see the extent of her self-imposed isolation.

Were there ever nights, she wonders, when Mulan shed her armor in the privacy of her tent, and could no longer recognize herself without it?

So maybe what she wants is, for starters, to return to that hotel room in L.A., ditching the crypto summit in favor of ordering room service on the company credit card. Maybe what she wants is to sit there with Gilfoyle again, with a glass of tap water and an overpriced bowl of pasta, to listen to him brag about all the dumb ways he and Dinesh have gotten themselves into trouble over the years. Because she knows him well enough by now to know that that was his way of showing her his trust: letting her read between the lines of his casual flippancy, to draw what conclusions she will based on what she sees there. Like a cat offering her its kill, before slinking back into the shadows of wherever it is that cats go. She wishes she had even an ounce of his self-assurance.

But that night’s long past, a liminal moment in a liminal space, and instead of opening up to him like she so wanted to, she’d clammed up again. And this is where they’ve ended up. Confused. Frustrated. Apologetic. Alone.

 _I don’t want you to like me for all the reasons that I think you like me_ , she wants to text him.

Or: _I like you so much but I’m afraid to be with you because I’m afraid of how I feel._

Or, simply: _I need you to know that I’m so fucking sorry._

She sounds like a fucking sociopath. She doesn’t text him anything.

Instead, she takes a shower, changes her sheets, and climbs back into bed—never mind that it’s only about nine in the evening. She tosses and turns for at least an hour, if not more, trying to recall the various breathing exercises that she’d researched for Peter Gregory, that one time he’d decided to dabble in transcendental meditation. She doesn’t end up transcending anything, but when the sleepiness finally starts to settle in, it feels like a goddamn deliverance.

True to his word (because he always fucking is, Monica thinks with a sigh), Gilfoyle does indeed leave her alone at work, save for when they’re meeting about their coin offering. Mostly, though, his attention is diverted back to his regular systems stuff. She doesn’t understand very much of it, just enough to know that network security is his top priority now that their user base is expanding at such a rapid rate. The last thing they need is another 51% attack on their hands, but if the situation should arise, he’ll be armed and ready. She is glad for that. Really, she is.

“Dude,” Dinesh says to her one morning, “what the fuck is going on with you and Gilfoyle?”

It’s become a routine of theirs, sharing a pot of coffee and whatever breakfast the ever-stocked office kitchenette has in supply every morning—just hanging out and shooting the shit while the rest of the team slowly trickles in. It’s pretty nice. Dinesh is actually kind of a cool guy, Monica has realized, when he’s not needlessly posturing to coworkers and Tinder matches. Or when he’s prying into this whole… mess.

“Um… Nothing?” Monica lies, entirely unconvincingly. Which only serves to reinforce Dinesh’s suspicions, but it’s hard not to naturally default to evasive measures.

“So you have no idea why he’s been a mopey dick for the last week,” Dinesh says, every word dripping with so much smugness that Monica suddenly understands why Gilfoyle can never resist the urge to fuck with him. He’s really fucking annoying, when he wants to be. “I mean, more so than he usually is. Not a fucking clue?”

“Jesus, Dinesh, I fucked up, okay?” Monica sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Is that what you want to hear? Because I’ve already fucking apologized to him, so if he told you—”

“Oh, God no. I’m not, like, his fucking messenger or some shit. In fact, I couldn’t care less about his personal life. But it _is_ interesting.”

Monica doesn’t like the way Dinesh crosses his arms, a satisfied smirk growing across his face.

“What’s interesting?” she asks cautiously.

“When I asked him what was up, those were his exact words, too: ‘I fucked up’. That’s all he said. It takes a lot for him to admit to something like that, but I’m sure you knew that already.”

“Wait,” says Monica, “why does he think _he_ fucked up?”

Dinesh shrugs. “Like I said. Not a messenger. Just—”

“Concerned for your friends?” Monica interrupts, fixing him with the most condescending smile she can muster. “Aww.”

“Mock me all you want, Monica. Doesn’t change the fact that you two badly need to sort your shit out. Also, I want my parking space back, and that’s not gonna happen until he stops being an emo piece of shit.”

“Yeah, well, you can shove your precious parking space right up your hairy virgin a—”

“Unbelievable,” Dinesh cuts her off, shaking his head in bewilderment even as he tries and fails to suppress his grin. “Do you even realize how much you sound like him now?”

Monica opens her mouth to respond, a thousand vulgar propositions for Dinesh on the tip of her tongue, but then Gilfoyle walks in and makes a beeline for his desk without a single word to either of them. She turns away and sips her coffee, wishing she’d brought something to spike it with.

One week later, which is two weeks after their hookup—not that she’s keeping track—Gilfoyle texts her.

_Can we talk?_

Followed by,

_I won’t take up too much of your time._

Monica keeps her eyes glued to her laptop, but in the reflection of the screen she can see Gilfoyle’s back as he types away nonchalantly at his own desk, then turns to say something to Danny. His demeanor betrays nothing, save for the fact that he’s got a free hand on top of his phone, drumming his fingers while he waits for her response.

Truth be told, although her stomach still clenches with guilt when she thinks about the way she’d stonewalled him that night, his text now does give her some small measure of relief. At least he’s open to talking about it.

 _Of course_ , she texts back. _Lunch, rooftop patio?_

 _Thank you_ , he replies almost immediately.

A few hours later, Gilfoyle heads upstairs with an apple and a bowl of cereal; Monica gives him a couple of minutes before she follows suit.

“When was the last time you ate anything of nutritional value?” she asks, sitting down at the picnic table across from him and unwrapping the cellophane from around her sandwich.

Gilfoyle gestures toward his apple with his spoon. “Fruits are healthy.”

Monica rolls her eyes, but can’t help a smile.

“Listen,” he says after a moment of hesitation, “I like you, Monica. I value our friendship very much—far more than I expected to, if I’m being honest. But as much as I’d like for that friendship to evolve, I have absolutely no interest in going down that path unless you want it, too.”

“It’s not that simple,” she says.

“Why not?” And Monica is surprised to hear no edge in Gilfoyle’s voice, none of his usual abrasiveness. And it’s that sincere curiosity—that vulnerability—that hits her like a punch in the fucking gut.

“Because you just fucking told me that you have feelings for me,” she protests, suddenly feeling very defensive. “I mean, how are you even okay with this?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You want me to dictate the entirety of—of whatever this is, whatever we are—completely on my own terms? And you’re, what, just gonna play along no matter what? Jesus Christ, Gilfoyle, do you know how much of an asshole I feel like now?”

“That wasn’t my intention,” Gilfoyle says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Monica sighs. “Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She rises to her feet, her appetite gone before she’s taken even one bite of her sandwich. No matter; she can try to pick at it later. Right now, though, she just needs to be—not here. “And, um. For what it’s worth, I do feel the same way about you,” she says sadly. “I just—I don’t think I can give you what you want.”

She turns to head back to the stairwell, but Gilfoyle stands, too, and they’re close, so close to each other, closer than they’ve been since—well.

“What is it that you think I want?” he asks.

Monica takes a step back. “Um—”

“All I want,” he says, “is to maintain whatever level of friendship or otherwise that you’re comfortable with. That’s enough for me. I don’t have any expectations, and I’m not here to pressure you into doing anything except being honest with yourself. So I’ll just ask you this.” He inches closer to her. She stands her ground.

“Free of any expectations, implications, or extraneous considerations and complications—put in the very simplest of terms—what do _you_ want?”

Monica takes a deep breath, trying to organize all the thoughts and fears and desires and worries crowding in her head. Gilfoyle is looking at her patiently, his expression perfectly sincere like she’s only seen that one night at the crypto summit, when they’d somehow stumbled their way into something akin to friendship. No pretense, no sarcasm, no underlying sardonic amusement playing in his eyes. Just—openness, plain and simple.

She could run away now, she knows, and he would let her go, without question or complaint. And they’ll be civil to each other like they have been these past two weeks. Everything else—that night at the crypto summit, the shared all-nighters and workday drinks, their little tryst—all of that will fade into distant memory, and one day the civility will cease hurting, too. Mostly. Probably. Just like last time. Just like Teddy.

But she’s so fucking tired of waiting for her hurts to fade. Because maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t even have to hurt at all. And maybe she does know at least some of the things she wants.

“I want you to know that I’m kind of a mess,” she tells him. “And that I’m fucking terrified of—of all this. But I don’t want to be.”

“Okay.”

“And that I do want—whatever this is, whatever we are—to continue. Because I want to be around you, and I don’t ever want to lose what we have.”

“Okay.”

“But I also don’t want to think too hard about what we are to each other. Just—I don’t know, good friends, who happen to fuck on occasion? And I want you to be okay with that.”

Gilfoyle nods. “I am.”

“Okay,” Monica says. She’s still apprehensive, still not used to baring herself in this way, much less to Gilfoyle, of all fucking people. But she also feels lighter than she has in weeks, almost like she’s floating.

So she kisses him, because it’s what she wants to do—what she’s been wanting to do—and when he wraps his arms around her in response, she’s surprised to realize just how achingly she’s missed him these past couple of weeks.

“So... where do we go from here?” she asks when they break apart again.

“No idea.” Gilfoyle shrugs, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “We’ll take it one day at a time, I suppose.”

Monica smiles, too. “That’s actually kind of exciting.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It really is.”

  


**IV.**

When Dinesh pulls into the office parking structure on Monday morning, the spot that Gilfoyle’s stupid Mad Max bike usually occupies is empty. That’s surprising all on its own; even if the motherfucker barely manages to make it into the office before ten every day, he usually makes an effort to park his bike here first thing in the morning before fucking off to—who even knows where, honestly.

What’s even more surprising, however, is that the Electric Vehicle Parking sign over the spot has been taped over by a poster board, upon which is scrawled: FUCK YOU, DINESH.

Dinesh smirks as he pulls into his reclaimed space and retrieves the charging cable from its port on the wall. He plugs in his car, makes sure it’s taking the charge, then checks his phone: he’s got a good fifteen minutes to spare before he really needs to head upstairs. That’s good. In light of his new parking space decor, and all the implications that come along with it, there are a couple errands that he has to run.

The first thing he does is hit up the ATM around the corner, because he now owes Priyanka fifty fucking dollars. Then, he heads to the stationery store nestled between the Thai place and the Starbucks down the street.

The cashier beams at him when he walks in, wind chimes tinkling softly as the door swings shut behind him.

“Good morning,” Dinesh says cheerfully. “I was wondering if you could help me pick something out for a friend of mine. Do you have any cards that say ‘I told you so’?”


End file.
